27/07/2020
Tharoor: Mission Houses Should Record Indians’ Wage Grievances Before Repatriation
millions of Asian migrant workers each year.
Unfortunately,
countries
of destination
and origin have begun repatriation procedures
Coronavirus
States
Our Journalists
Write-In
of these workers, without any proper redress mechanism, since courts and other labour
dispute mechanisms have also been closed during the period of the lockdown.
Therefore, these violations are piling up and either not be addressed or overburdening
the existing dispute resolution mechanisms.
The stranded worker gets a call from the mission house giving him 48 hours maximum to
purchase a return ticket. The companies often clear the migrant workers’ papers only
after the worker gets a travel con rmation call from the embassy.
Eventually, the worker does not have enough time to register his grievances.
India started evacuating Indians from COVID-hit countries from May 06. And from then,
till July 16, Air India has evacuated 2,15,495 Indians. Meanwhile, Indian private carriers
evacuated 12,258 Indians, Indian private charters evacuated 1,35,000. In addition to
this, foreign charters evacuated 2,11,361 Indians.
In all, around 6.87 lakh Indians were own into India from COVID-hit countries.
There are around 35 million migrant workers in the Arab Gulf countries who work under
Kafala system, a peculiar employer-employee contract which restricts many rights and
freedom of migrant workers.
Out the 35 million migrant workers, nearly 10 million are Indians.
Claims Commission
Detailing on wage theft and justice mechanism, Roula Hamati, coordinator, Cross
Regional Center for Refugees and Migrants, said that the pandemic has normalised
wage theft in all sectors and only a few go to courts.
“We can’t continue like this. Numbers should not be a criterion in taking up this issue.
We should set up an International Claims Commission to deal with the wage theft issue,”
Roula said.
According to Roula, the International Claims Commission must be set up as a specialised
international quasi-legal body of expedited justice to adjudicate on claims of migrant
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